Turning Eighteen
Mo swallowed the last bit of cookie and stared at the two couples sitting a table over. She’d always taken for granted that Joined couples were happy and loved each other, but now she wondered if some Chosens were going through the motions, living in quiet despair while praising the Chosen Council for its wisdom. She shivered and grabbed another cookie from the plate. If any of the military on-duty at the party knew what she was thinking, they’d probably drag her back to the Indoctrination Academy for a refresher stay. Not only would that be horribly embarrassing, since she’d completed her Level Five within the past year, but she’d have to forget about the Military Academy.
She couldn’t be the only Rymellan who’d felt this way, though—worried about her future, her Chosen Papers, her life; hopelessly in love with someone and unable to imagine being happy with anyone else. But given how few Chosen Violations were committed—only the Adams Incident in the past thirty years—the Chosen Tradition obviously worked. She had to be stronger, trust the Way, expect all her doubts to be swept away when her Chosen Papers arrived and she met her Chosen.
Mo shook her head. She was assuming she was a Chosen, and for the wrong reason.
“What are you talking to yourself about?”
Mo jumped, and twisted to look behind her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Les rounded the chair so Mo could see her without straining her neck. “And I’m sorry about before. I don’t know why I did that.” Les looked past Mo for a second, then refocused on her. “I don’t know, it’s awkward. I just want it to be over.”
“Want what to be over?” Mo asked, her heart pounding.
“The party.”
“Oh.”
Les held out her hand. “Would you like to dance?”
“Yes. I would.”
“Then let’s dance.”
Mo took Les’s hand and did her best to smile at her. Some girl out there was the luckiest girl on the planet, and she didn’t even know it. Was it so wrong to want to be a Chosen so she could keep the tiniest shred of hope alive that the luckiest girl was her?
She squeezed Les’s hand when they walked onto the dance floor and hugged her before they got into position and fell into step with the couples whirling around them. But despite being in Les’s arms, she felt unsettled and scared. Her relationship with Les, her entire life, could be shattered on her eighteenth birthday. She wished she could know right now what the Chosen Council had decided for her, but she’d have to wait. The next five months were going to be the longest five months of her life.
Five Months Later
Mo opened her eyes to darkness and inwardly groaned—she’d woken up early, yet again. She thrust her arm out from under the blanket and groped around on the nightstand for her comm unit. Her fingertips brushed against it, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She slid closer to the edge of the bed and reached out . . . and it fell off the nightstand and thudded onto the floor. A pencil rolled off after it. Mo froze and listened. Kary’s breathing was still rhythmic. Good; she hadn’t woken. Kary always slept soundly, falling fast asleep moments after lights out and never waking until her comm unit sounded her morning alarm. Mo envied her.
She slipped out of bed and picked up her comm unit. Its illuminated display read 06:12. Great. Her first class was at 08:30. Shivering as goose bumps rose on her arms and back, she ducked back under the blanket and closed her eyes, hoping to grab another hour’s sleep. But it was no use. Today was the day she’d dreaded and the day that couldn’t have arrived fast enough. Today could turn out to be the worst day of her life. Today she’d find out if she was a Chosen. And today she’d have to do what she’d done on most days for the past month—operate on barely six hours of sleep.
Figuring she might as well get up, Mo slipped out of bed again. She scooped her sneakers from the mat near the door and grabbed her track suit from the back of a chair. In the bathroom, she pulled the suit on over her pyjamas. Nobody had noticed her odd attire so far—but then, not many jogged at the crack of dawn.
She left the room and crept down the corridor to the stairs that led to the first floor and the dormitory’s exit. She’d expected to be assigned a bed in one of the barracks, a notion that had earned an incredulous look from the admitting lieutenant and the admonition, “The barracks? Those are temporary lodgings, for potential recruits or Defence members on leave or visiting students from other academies. They’re not for you, Cadet!”
Sharing a room with Les would be ideal, and they’d discovered that they could request each other as roommates for their second year. But neither had pushed the other to fill out the form, even though the earlier they submitted the request, the greater the chance it would be fulfilled. Mo knew why they were stalling. If she received a Solitary Notification today, there wouldn’t be any point in sharing a room. They might as well volunteer to be targets when the cadets practised shooting to wound with live weapons. It would be less painful.
As soon as she was outside, she broke into a jog, too keyed up to stretch. Jogging was okay. Flat-out running would earn her a strike. She’d wait until she reached the track before trying to outrun her fears.
“Cadet,” barked a passing lieutenant, obviously in a hurry to get to her post.
“Morning, Lieutenant Dunnigan,” Mo replied, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. Was that her? Was that Les’s Chosen? Her hands balled into fists. Today would be stressful enough without playing the Is that Les’s Chosen? game, a game she played much too often. And anyway, Dunnigan must be at least twenty-six or twenty-seven, too old to be Les’s Chosen. At most, Les’s Chosen would be twenty-three, maybe twenty-four, depending on when her birthday was. So Dunnigan couldn’t possibly—
Mo sighed. She was doing it again. Some days she hardly thought about it; other days it constantly occupied her mind. Worse, the shadowy figure who would eventually take Les away from her lurked in the background whenever she and Les were together. Sometimes Mo felt as if she was in a relationship with two other people.